it's not a bird not a plane it's a drone in recent years the u.s. has relied heavily on the drone program to wage a war on terror around the globe so why is the mainstream media finally starting to pay attention to the top secret program and what do we really know about drones will question more next. and there's one million dollar reward for offered for the capture of a former l.a.p.d. police officer accused of going on a killing spree the suspect says he was falsely he falsely he was falsely fired and has information about wrongdoings inside of the l.a. police force we'll take a look at the case and his claim just ahead. plus both congress and president obama have said immigration reform must happen here in the u.s. but will the plan include a guest worker program will shine a light on the dark history of the u.s. guest program in the past.

it's monday february eleventh five him in washington d.c. i'm maggie lopez and you're watching our t.v. it's not a bird not quite a plane it's an unmanned aerial vehicle that's dominating newspaper headlines cable coverage and confirmation hearings these days but it's not necessarily the surveillance aspects that has everyone riled up it's the cold blooded characteristics of this machine that has the networks talking. officials inside the justice department have drafted a document saying the president has the legal authority to use drones the american government is launching a new war some of this country's seventy five hundred drones may be about to take off with new targets in their sights the secrecy the lack of transparency and lack of oversight of the drone program the issue of drones and extra judicial killings has become so mainstream that even former defense secretary robert gates is speaking out about ways to make the program more palatable over the weekend he came

out in support of a special independent court to evaluate the necessity of any given drone strike meanwhile lawmakers and civilians alike are demanding more oversight for the drone program almost ten years after it started nonetheless so for the latest on this issue i'm joined now by christopher swift in studio he's an adjunct professor at national security studies at georgetown university thank you for joining me tonight and let's let's start with this this recent development coming out of robert gates he says an independent special court to kind of deal with these would help the program what are your thoughts on that i think it's definitely good to get an additional form of review in the process today this is been done exclusively within the executive branch and as we've seen from the new york times reporting elsewhere the final decision making seems to have been taken within the white house itself with very little interbred review so to the extent that a special court could be created i think it would be helpful in giving if not the

veneer of judicial review the actuality of judicial review which is important from a due process standpoint so let's talk about the difference between because all most of the americans new polls have come out saying seventy six percent or so of americans actually support drone attacks on foreign targets that number goes down significantly when they're talking about attacking american citizens abroad why this difference and should we separate these these two kind of cat into different categories are essential the same thing sure will from a policy perspective they have. here to be different and part of the reason why we're seeing such strong support in the united states for the drone program it's part of a broader shift that the obama administration has taken from resource intensive very bloody very costly very long counterinsurgency operations in places like afghanistan and iraq towards a lighter footprint counterterrorism approach that you see now in yemen in was there is time in pakistan in somalia and also possibly in mali in the future now looking at the legal question as to whether this is that there's

a distinction to be drawn between foreign individuals and u.s. persons there are some important constitutional distinctions there well the international law is pretty much the same there are some u.s. constitutional principles that it's hatcher at that at least need to be considered when we're talking about targeting a u.s. person in a foreign theater of war for a targeted assassination and let's go ahead and start talking about the international law and the international implications that drones are having first of all can you kind of break down how drones are are not legal and the way that we use them currently in the middle east sure important distinction to be made here you know a lot of people related this to the torture allegations that were made during the bush administration torture is always illegal under international and u.s. law i really begs belief to to hear people make the argument that under certain circumstances it could be targeted killing is a very different thing the fact of the matter is in war we use force whether legal or illegal to achieve political objectives and if you look at the factors that

would make a drone operation legal or the first crack or from an international perspective is there a threat and the second factor is has the country where the threat existed exists invited the united states in to assist it with its own internal security problems in the case of a country like yemen that's very clear at the empty government is openly endorsed u.s. drone programs including here in the united in the united states the president made a speech a few months back given the president should say that a few speeches a few months back really endorsing that because of pakistan it's more murky you know the pakistan. parliament has said they'll be no more drone operations on pakistani soil but the pakistani executive branch continues to collaborate with the united states on a. an unofficial basis with regard to some of the targeting decisions that are being made so it's complicated in the case of pakistan much more player from that or national law perspective in the case of yemen or somalia and you have a different experience and a different kind of perspective than many other people you have in on the ground perspective of yemen and the yemeni people and how they see it go ahead and talk

about that i'm sure i was in yemen this past summer taking a look at al qaeda and how it is insurgency their interface with the indigenous tribal structures and it's sort of an important example of how it is changing both on a regional basis and on a generational basis and when i was there and i asked people questions about the drone so that wasn't a person purpose of my being there but that was a good opportunity to ask the question two very different phenomena emerged the first is people in yemen overwhelmingly overwhelmingly resent the u.s. intervention and they resent the perception and the belief that many of them have the drones are targeting in innocent yemeni civilians there was a very bad attack in two thousand and nine was actually a cruise missile attack that killed forty people in a wedding party and that sort of the the operating bases that ordinary yemenis have when they think about the u.s. drone program what i also found is that the drones are not recruiting for al qaeda even though we tend to presume that in the united states and in europe and in russia and elsewhere in fact what's driving al qaeda recruiting by and large in

most instances in most places is not ideology it's not religion it's not politics it's not anger about drones it's the economic crisis in the pot and poverty and starvation that ordinary yemenis face in their everyday lives so what we're seeing is we're seeing a willingness to tolerate drones from an operational standpoint and absolutely no tolerance for civilian casualties in places like yemen and also the drone program of the perception of the u.s. drone program is sort of an imperialist endeavor starting to interfere with u.s. objectives in yemen viz a viz. a national dialogue the constitution writing and a political transition to parliamentary elections in two thousand and fourteen so is what you're saying that drones are harming the u.s. objective abroad we have it depends on which objective we're looking at if you're looking at the short term military objective i think drones have been quite successful in terms of degrading al qaeda in the arabian peninsula its capacity to respond and adapt and we've seen them fragment and dispersed their forces throughout the country they're engaged much more in terrorists or good type

operations rather than insurgent type operations and not holding territory the way they were before but for a long term perspective if you look at u.s. policy objectives rather than just our counterterrorism objectives exclusively i think it is having a corrosive effect especially with the arab spring generation which sees the united states and saudi arabia for better or for worse interfering with yemen's ability to decide its own political future so overall do you think that the use of drones is helping the american cause we know it's not on or off it's not either or as long as the yemeni government and the yemeni society has this fundamental security threat is going to be need for some response and to the extent that the united states can assist the yemeni government in fielding that response i think it's something that's reasonable to do the question is really not liberty versus security terrorism versus human rights it's how we balance these things going forward and how we make sure that our short term that we're properly aligning our short term security imperatives with our long term political objectives and more importantly with our legal and political values so the best thing to do overall is to increase

transparency of oh say it was in the u.s. and internationally that might be one way of going out it aright i appreciate your opinions christopher swift an adjunct professor of national security studies at georgetown university thank you for joining us pleasure to be with you. in case you haven't been following the case christopher dorner is a thirty three year old former u.s. navy lieutenant who served in iraq before joining the l.a.p.d. he was fired from the force in two thousand and nine and promised to extract revenge on the department for it's his it's transgressions against him or so they say he remains on the run now at a press conference this afternoon the riverside police department referred to dorner as a felon despite not having his day in court in fact charges of already been filed against him for for a couple of the deaths of police officers and their families though the police need to still apprehend him in order for this to actually come into fruition the

l.a.p.d. and other nearby police agencies last week embarked on a huge manhunt to find this man however in the process two separate incidents occurred where police officers fired on vehicles they claimed were similar to door nurse injuring three innocent people but the vehicles really weren't that similar at all in fact this is how the attorney of two of the victims describes the incident. bugles a different color. the license plate doesn't match there's nothing there for you to start shooting people and even if the. person in question you know mr dorner is still at the give an opportunity to get out can't just started this retreat justice so is the l.a.p.d. making the situation even more dangerous with these fire first and ask questions later tactics to answer that and more i'm joined by independent journalist rania colic hi there rania so as i just mentioned three innocent people have been injured in this hunt for dorner two are hispanic women one was a man that weighed less than one hundred pounds less than the suspect first of all

how did they get it so wrong in why did they open fire without confirming that it was actually him first. well i think part of the reason is because they're scared because this man is physically targeting them. so that here probably makes them more likely to fire whereas the question that doesn't justify it of course but i think more importantly that it's the way they react is really emblematic of the way that a lot of police departments and southern california react towards towards suspects they often i mean there are so many he's not there were people are shot. before before even knowing that the police they're dealing with are people are shot just because they're just directed of doing something and oftentimes it is people of color. if this is something that a lot of police departments doing rachel crow does come down to racial profiling and i think that it's really important to recognize that in the hunt for this man

the l.a.p.d. has really shown that a lot of the criticisms this me and through of them in his online media festo really do have truth in them now but the manifesto went on to talk about a lot of things everything from temp tivo to just everything really something i do have to ask you is this do you think that because this man has more training than the average american citizen the average american suspect that it necessitates or that it makes any type of a exception for the type of force that they are actually using to try to find this man. well that i mean it depends it depends i mean we're not sure if they're saying that they want to capture him there has been nothing from the l.a.p.d. that i know up saying that they want to kill him but because of the way they obviously like you said shot at those innocent people who looked nothing like him because they were driving trucks that look similar to his trucks although they really didn't look that similar there is good reason to believe that if they think

they see him they will kill him and that's a question that we really i think that we really need to examine and consider whether that's ok because this man hasn't been that he just he's been charged with stuff today but you have to have a trial and. i mean when somebody is considered armed armed and dangerous if they do pose a lethal threat police are totally justified in taking them out but yeah depends i mean if he comes in guns blazing at least officers they have every right to kill him or to shoot to kill him right i mean i'm not sure we're questioning that but one of the things i do want to ask you do you really see this as these two incidents where three people were injured as an unfortunate mistake or as an institutional problem that really an institutional problem i mean i documented so many cases where people have been shot and sometimes killed because of course it's been used on all kinds of people mostly people of color in poor communities where you know police officers take them out and they haven't been armed i mean it

happens all the time to something that's really consistent and you'll see it i mean among the communities of people that live in this area there's a lot of there's a lot of agreement with this with the christian. essman of the l.a.p.d. and it's because this is what they're used to this kind of police violence directed at average citizens now you talked a little bit earlier about the racial profiling that you say others say is going on and so let's take that part that aspect of it and turn the conversation to the topic of police brutality in general within the l.a.p.d. now pretty recently in l.a. a police officer was under investigation over claims that he threatened a woman jail time if she. refuse to have sex with him there was a case where police beat a boy who was riding a skateboard on the wrong side of a road there was another case where a police officer actually body slam a nurse after she mouthed off to him so can you kind of put this into context i mean is this the l.a.p.d. culture is this what they're teaching or are these individual cops it's easy to

just blame this on individual cops but if you just look at the fact that none of these people i mean oftentimes you probably ninety nine percent of the time we does there's an l.a.p.d. are never disciplined for any of the things that you just mentioned i mean the man is being accused of sexually assaulting women and threatening them with jail time if they didn't comply with him that he and his partner were that those accusations were known about for two years before the l.a.p.d. really started investigating it i mean there is a there's there's a certain sense that they'll tolerate officers who often abuse people and when you do that these officers stay on the street and there are a lot to do it again and again and again that any repercussions and that is institutional that's a serious cultural problem within the police department and we like to think that it no longer exists so that is a rugby king right but there's just so many keys of i mean the past two years there's countless times where police have shot and killed unarmed people or spotting slam people against laws like the nurse you just mentioned so i would

definitely say that it is time that we look into these allegations and really start to consider whether you know this is a look that is a cultural problem it's time to consider whether the l.a.p.d. is really tolerating this inside inside their staffs and if in a journalist running a college thank you for joining us with your opinions thank you. president obama and congress have vowed to make immigration reform a top priority this here included in this new senate bipartisan reform is an expansion to the guest worker program the u.s. has had a long history of guest worker programs which critics say exploit cheap labor and benefits only big business our teams are mongolian i'll take a look back at the history of this program in spanish process of means a man who works with arms and have but in american lingo they are called lifesavers there are several program brought millions of guest workers from mexico to the u.s.

between one thousand nine hundred two in one thousand nine hundred sixty four on the terms like e. when you got here the first thing that would do is take off all your clothes. many americans know little about the nation's largest guest worker experiment springing the g.t.t. . but i see it was at the border that was. and straits everybody is so rich it's. you know. people were treated like animals present day debate over immigration reform makes the story of the brass seto's increasingly relevant this was gold on pick crops across the u.s. during world war two he's still helping fellow but i said those collector earnings they were owed from decades ago as the police thousand we'll soon to be that this country the u.s. forgets that thanks to the hard work of immigrants it was able to win the war. the one that you have them via the idea of cultural industry lobbied for that i said a program arguing that world war two would bring labor shortages however historian

and filmmaker gilbert gonzalez argues that farmers took advantage of desperate immigrants to bring down wages and stop union organizing in the fields they have a hundred forty strikes. there is a one strike that occurs throughout the twenty two years later program it era was the labor movement from the orchards here in california to the con fields of the south millions of guest workers came to work long hours and under brutal conditions during the one nine hundred forty s. fifty's and sixty's big agriculture exploited this foreign workforce for their profit knowing that the what i said was couldn't stand up for their rights they could be brought in they could be thrown out if they started organize. so there. was one person called and they were growers green today a guest worker provision is a contentious portion of immigration reform president obama's proposal makes no mention of it but the bipartisan gang of eight in the senate are insisting on it

they're all types of industries in our country which have used the work of immigrants every day to achieve the economic goals of those industries in the days of the dust settles employers routinely ignored regulations worker advocates point out that migrant laborers are still taking advantage of look at the conditions under which agricultural workers live now conditions have not changed in over one hundred years at a time of mass deportations they continue to work or abuse it needs to be seen if the us is doomed to repeat it starkie history in los angeles ramon the lindo r t so on one hand we have the department of homeland security ramping up border patrol and deportations on the other hand we have senators and the president supporting a pathway to citizenship for illegal immigrants how can these two ideas co-exist well devon pena as a professor of ethics studies at the university of washington and he might have

some answers for us hey there don so we're just all or most part report talking about there are several programs of the past do you think we could see something similar like this that make a resurgence in this immigration debate. well it's already a big part of the immigration debate given the amount of data that there is and previous experience as you know and probably heard from some of your other guests the original but it sort of program ran from one thousand forty two all the way to make it sixty four sixty five it was supposed to be a temporary wartime emergency act but it was extended due to pressure from the growers who loved mixing up undocumented workers with what i said was to bust up the efforts of cis of travis was trying to build a union the same point feels so ever since then it's always been seen by the form workers themselves as an anti-union strategy to break up the possibility of our nation's former careers improving their living and working conditions and also

because of the very brutal exploitation that continues to this very day there was just recently a report issued by the southern poverty law center i don't know if any of your guests mentioned this about the current condition of age to program workers which they described as a modern system slavery that's an interesting point i have not actually heard about so tell me all unions will respond to this kind of program if it is a randstad at. well it's a very complicated question because if you look at the sectors where union growth is occurring it's the sectors where latinos are employed so latinos are very pro union and in fact some of the most successful organizing campaigns that we've seen over the course of modern or or to if you will twentieth century history occurred among mexican workers or mexican american workers in some cases even to document join unions and go out on strike so you would think that there would be some sort

of animosity between the unions and the workers and there was for a very long time the a.f.l.-cio gotten into immigrant position that evolved as i think the unions begin to recognize that a lot of the blue collar jobs and sort of the agricultural sector jobs were going to be done by people of mexico or like the origin and that's when the unions began to try to organize among mexican immigrant workers but there's a deeper history you really have to note here if you go back to the period between the eight hundred ninety s. one nine hundred ten the industrial workers of the world the good ole and arkell syndicalists from the i.w.w. the wobblies they were the ones organizing the organize and they phoned a lot of mexicans and filipino and other marginalized workers that were very eager to join unions of the the the industrial organization rather than the craft unions we have obviously there's quite a quite a long history of these but i said all programs and the effects that they have on

the people there is one notable difference style between the one nine hundred forty s. and now and that is the fact that president obama and others are really advocating that innovators and engineers and mathematicians come to the u.s. to work and live so can you talk a little bit about this dichotomy between the people coming out that used to come for jobs that no one else wanted and now for these highly coveted jobs. well that's part of a contradiction is the way in which we assume that form work is unskilled it's actually highly skilled look at what's happening to arizona and alabama and georgia and other states that have passed state level into immigrant legislation their agricultural economy suppose the port because they tried to recruit local workers and people realizing oh gee maybe this work is a little bit more skilled than we thought manual labor does not mean met menial labor and i do think that one of the first things the obama administration has to

do is go to win the hearts and minds of the latino community is to revalue or stigmatized approach to what we consider to be skilled work as just being computer engineering and similar occupations agriculture is a very highly skilled labor that has been grievously bell you know i think for historic reasons to keep food affordable for workers in the cities as one reason but part of the revaluation of agricultural markets is the conversation that's not taking place on probably one of the few that has mentioned this to you. what i can say well i think what they. call action purposes that president obama definitely has the least a good part of the latino community on the side proselyting not all i'll have to see how this actually impacts the u.s. economy watch to see how it plays out if they even introduce this program there's just so many question marks about this program devon penny a professor of ethnic studies at the university of washington thank you for joining us more closer call me again. if you thought the u.s.

was susceptible to cyber attacks before get ready for this a new intelligence assessment by the government is beginning to reveal the magnitude of cyber attacks and the countries who are responsible for them the report indicates that sustained hacks are a threat to both national as well as economic competitiveness national security interest that is in the past the defense industry has worried about government agencies being targeted however it's private companies and financial institutions that are increasingly at risk representative mike rogers one of the men behind the defunct cyber legislation known as cispa notes that ninety five percent of all private sector networks are vulnerable to these hits many have already experienced an attack but are reluctant to step forward to authorities to actually report them in fact some estimates put the value of information stolen around four hundred billion dollars per year now on the other hand privacy advocates worry this new focus on cyber protections might actually reignite the cyber legislation debate

representative rogers himself is expected to reintroduce the system bill this week now speaking to the washington post anonymous officials say that the energy finance information technology aerospace an automotive industries have all been hacked recently the main perpetrator of these cases of cyber espionage according to the report includes china followed by russia and france china of course has the humanly deny the attacks exist and that it's worked behind them but that's not stopping the u.s. from ramping up cyber security for his part president obama is said to be working on an executive order aimed at bolstering cyber security and is expected to announce that as early as this wednesday but we'll have to keep you up to date as this story continues to unfold. also time now to check in with our web team to see what they're working on our team where producer angie and blake is in the news room to tell me more hey there and your i heard you were on our call about a sniper who killed osama bin ladin and him not having pensioned where do you hear

that you know of course there is an article in r.t. dot com about yes about one of the snipers from seal team six you know it this may will mark the two year anniversary of that crazy execution over. where you know we finally got bin laden out of there and we don't know too much about it we know what the seal team six book says we know what the movie says we know what the president says and it's pretty much where it stops right there but the center for investigative reporting and esquire teamed up to bring together this fantastic story about the man who claims to have actually been responsible for killing osama bin laden he was number two going up to the third floor of the compound and he's was there to put a couple shots into his head but you would think that you know after executing the biggest name in terrorism than modern history that this this soldier would be you know he would be be well off rate i mean that's the assumption that would get but according to this story done by the side of center for investigative reporting these shooter who single handedly took bin laden's life is not doing too hot in

fact after retiring from the navy he had his pension cut he had his health insurance benefits lashed in now he's just trying to get by is a veteran who is not getting the kind of respect that you would think from someone involved in such a monumental part of modern history so we're going to have to say in go to our tea dot com to get the rest of that started our concept usa that is out of the artist web producer and your blake with a preview of what's trending today on our web site. well the t.s.a. has added another critic to long list of people speaking out against the agency we're now in cellist aben good heart is speaking out against the t.s.a. after age and snapped his very rare cello into the cello was a one of a kind heinrich com it was broken by air security staff out of chicago's o'hare international airport as they examined the cases contents on february sixth of this year now gerhardt was in route to the magic in madison symphony orchestra in

wisconsin when the incident happened the musician described the incident as quote an act of brutal and careless behavior gerhart says that he suspects the t.s.a. agents were performing a search on the cello and put it back in its case carelessly and then forced that case shut consequently breaking it this is this is not actually the first time that a musician's instrument has been destroyed by the t.s.a. if you can believe it back in two thousand and one a polish pianist was he had his piano confiscated and short at the j.f.k. international airport because of quote a funny smelling glue now this latest case serves as just the latest example of the t.s.a. causing someone or something to snap and that's going to do it for now for more on the stories we covered go to youtube dot com slash r t america or check out our web site r t dot com slash usa and follow me on twitter at meghan underscore lopez.